:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51591281/usa-today-8901418.0.jpg)
You may have noticed that the Blues have been having issues scoring for the past couple weeks. Other than their 6-4 victory against the Calgary Flames last Saturday, they’ve been held to just one goal in four of their last five games. That’s a problem. How to fix it?
According to Tom Timmerman, David Perron and Robby Fabbri will be flipped, which will send Fabbri down to Patrik Berglund and Nail Yakupov’s line - which isn’t exactly a demotion considering how well Berglund and Yakupov have been playing together. How did Hitch come up with this?
"I just threw them in the mixer yesterday and they jumped out at me," Hitchcock said. "It gives me some flexibility based on each opponent. Rather than changing out wingers I'm able to change out centers if I want to see how it matches up during the competition. I just feel right now we need to take a short-term approach and see what works and hopefully by putting people more on their natural sides we have even more tempo that we need to play with. I've one back to mostly twosomes and I kept the twosomes together and changed out some of the singles. I liked this last night and hopefully I like it at the end of tonight."
The line blender is real, people. Hitch confirmed it.
Everything else? It’s the same to start tonight’s game, except for Carl Gunnarsson stepping in for an injured Robert Bortuzzo.
The Kings have won four in a row, all in extra time. The Blues aren’t in the strongest position right now to stop that momentum, but that’s the great thing about early season hockey - it’s early season hockey. There’s no point in threatening doom and gloom right now. They’re playing a team who is relying on Peter Budaj and who has an .877 save percentage and a 73.9% PK.
Perhaps the end of the dry spell is within sight.